


ghost

by scarletbluebird



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletbluebird/pseuds/scarletbluebird
Summary: Cassian and Jyn and how they meet, over and over again in different lives. In different universes. Cassian is the only one who remembers in each iteration.Or, 5 times Jyn and Cassian meet, plus a few more.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38
Collections: The RebelCaptain Network Secret Santa Exchange





	ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Christmas miaouerie! Here is your secret santa gift; I hope you enjoy it!!! <3 <3

ghost

“Why did you go with him?” Jyn once asks her mother. The two of them are standing in the gritty sand of Lah’mu, squinting in the midnight sun. The mountains in the distance are shrouded in fog; shadowy behemoths half submerged in a strange ocean of mist. “If this place makes you so unhappy?”

“Love is not such an easy thing to cast aside,” her mother replies, eyes on the horizon. There, Jyn can just make out the shape of her father, bent halfway down and tinkering with a moisture vaporizer. “Once you pick it up, it is always there to haunt you.” She lifts her hand to wave in response to Galen’s raised one, then looks down at Jyn. Her eyes somber. “Remember that, Jyn.”

It’s lifetimes before she does.

* * *

**one.**

Iziz in the summer is a cloying, obtrusive thing; the great red and pink fire blooms grow heavy on the trees, bowed branches curving low over the cobble stone streets. The heady smell of osmanthus mixes with the spices from the market’s cooking huts and the reek of an unwashed crowd pressed close permeates through the air. It is a controlled chaos: the market goers haggling in a multitude of languages; some laughing, some shouting with reddened faces as deals fall through. The illusion of freedom a thin veil when one only needed to glance up at the city walls and the storm troopers patrolling the wireline.

All this madness teems in the shadow of the once great Unifar Temple. Time and disuse having rendered it into nothing more than a half forgotten dilapidated ruin. Creeper vines eat into the crumbling façade; a vast legacy crushed to dust beneath the wheel. Even now, Jyn can see bright yellow yafaar birds flying into the turrets, no doubt colonizing the place and making it their own.

Something about it is nearly unbearable to Jyn. She pinches the bridge of her nose with her pointer and thumb and holds back a sigh, side eying down the street. Milek is holding court to a particularly rowdy bunch today; gesticulating wildly, paying little mind to the boiling broth in the wok behind him. Jyn idly wonders if it will catch his tarp on fire before he remembers to turn down the heat. She shakes her head and glances down at the chrono on her wrist. What was taking so long? The troopers were making her nervous. She’s very conscious of relaxing her shoulders and wrists - too many months in the highlands chasing ghosts to be completely at ease in a crowd.

“Hearty meal to be made tonight,” A smoky voice comes from her elbow.

Jyn continues to look down the street. “As long as it’s not over spiced,” she drawls.

“Never too much cardameem. I have brought you some for a stew.”

She turns around. “How thoughtful,” she nods towards the cracked slabs of Onderon marble that had once formed ornate steps. Her stride is matched and together they casually peruse past Milek’s stall and a handful of others until they’re safely sheltered beneath one of the fire trees. “You’re late.” She folds her arms across her pleated vest, sharply aware of the sweat breaking out on her forehead in the late afternoon heat.

“Ah yes,” The Mirialan nods her head, the dark markings around her eyes pulling tight at odds with her placid expression. “I ran into some traffic on the way here.”

“Oh?” Jyn scratches her nose with one finger, two.

“Indeed. Cleared up soon enough,” her contact says, pulling out a tin wrapped in wax paper. “here is the freshest spice I could find.”

“My thanks,” Jyn reaches out to take the tin and their hands brush. She notes the geometric patterns on the others fingers. “how much do I owe you?”

The Mirialan holds up her hand. “five credits.”

Jyn makes a face but digs in her pocket and pulls out the coin. “Pretty steep for some spice.”

“Best there is,” the woman assures, taking the credit chip. She puts it into a fold in her cloak and touches her forehead for a moment in courtesy. “Good health, drifter.” She says. And between one blink and the next she melts away into the crowd.

“Good health,” Jyn murmurs in her wake, slipping the tin into a hidden internal pocket of her vest. She takes her time, leans back on the stone wall and eyes the street through sweaty bangs, letting her gaze sweep across the crowd. She pulls a Jaffa pod out of her bag and sucks on it, relishing the moisture it releases while she counts the stormtroopers roaming the city walls. Satisfied that nothing is out of place, she steps into the fray.

* * *

She knows they’re gone before she jumps off the speeder. Too dark, too little movement. She wanders the empty halls of the hive with her heart in her throat barely stopping herself from hitting the walls. Despair rises in her throat, makes it hard think straight.

At the round table she lashes out with her foot and knocks over Saw’s chair. A scream of rage rises out of her and she leans over the table and puts her weight on the palms of her hands.

_Fine,_ she thinks, tucking her head down, shaking with anger. _Fine. I’ll do it myself._

* * *

It’s easy catching a ride off world, easy to go unnoticed when you’re small and quiet and dirty. Easy when other people don’t want to see you. Jyn keeps her own company and steals just what she needs to survive. She tucks herself away in a forgotten corner of the cargo bay and only when they’ve jolted into lightspeed does she relax and let herself reach into her vest and pull out the tin.

There, behind a fine dusty layer of cardameem gleams the silver titanium alloyed data disk she’d forsaked herself to get. She rests a shaky finger on its surface. _The world inside a seed_ , she thinks, reaching into her pants pocket for the portable data reader.

The holo-message flickers into existence, no bigger than the height of her finger. She listens and listens and listens and watches his face until her eyes run over with tears. Finally, she snaps the tin shut, the disk hiding safely underneath the spice, and scrubs at her face. Tries to remember the name of the man she’d met with Saw a few months before in the badlands and where he’d said he was headed. For all their eagerness to recruit, the Rebels didn’t make themselves easy to find.

She falls into shadowed dreams; half faces in the dark, the curve of her mother’s cheek as she looks out the window of their Coruscanti apartment. Her mouth is moving but Jyn can’t hear the words. They’re walking through the cramped apartment hallway, they’re walking through the shifting sands under Lah’mu’s heavy harvest moon; she’s chasing after her mother’s robes in a large temple complex, fingers catching on the coarse fabric weave.

“Mama!” she shouts, turning the corner at speed. But Mama isn’t there. The silhouette of her father stands limned in the strange light of a red star. He’s pointing up at something outside the giant window and she follows his finger-

“The heart of a star,” he says, pressing his finger against the glass. The look on his face is shadowed with resignation. _God,_ she thinks as one does in a dream, _he looks so old._ When she wakes it’s to the slow hum of the engines underneath her. The lifeblood of a ship. There’s a name bitter at the base of her tongue. Her necklace burns hot in the hollow of her throat.

* * *

Something dark sleeps in the jungles of Yavin IV, waiting. It makes her skin crawl as soon as she lands on the surface. It’s hard to breathe here in more ways than one; the very air thick and heavy with humidity.

“Not me,” she whispers to it, as she enters the thick forest. The strange purple trees grow so closely together they’re nearly impenetrable. “You’re not looking for me.”

_But what are you looking for?_ The trees seem to ask in return. Leaves rustling although there is no wind. The iridescent flowers hanging onto the bark of the trees glimmer under no sunlight. _Jyn, daughter of Lyra. Lyra daughter of Chel the Star. You know what stars are made of, Jyn._

“Not me,” she repeats. “You’re not looking for me.” She wanders for days, a strange frenetic determination powering her, like the visions that chase her into her dreams. She wipes the sweat from her face and ignores the burning muscles in her legs and walks, walks, walks beneath the canopy of millennia old trees.

She sees the woman before the woman sees her. Patrol duty, no doubt: camo grey with the rebel insignia stitched onto the side of her arm. Jyn watches her for a few moments from her position crouched behind a fallen log. Only when the woman puts her blaster away to eat does she stand up and step out to meet her.

* * *

They trek through a snarl of vines and out into an abrupt clearing. Ahead, Jyn can see a huge temple rising, its sharp peak towering above the tree-line. Moss grows heavy across the breadth of it. At its base she sees bustling movement and an array of space ready ships: A-wings and X-wings alike; old bulk freighters, and even some Imperial ones. Despite the bustle of movement, Jyn can’t help but feel a sharp sense of unease, like she’s disturbing a finely balanced sense of calm.

“You must have landed on the far side of the planet otherwise our sensors would have picked you up immediately.” The woman holding her elbow comments as they start to walk across the makeshift tarmac.

“Lucky me,” Jyn adjusts the binders on her wrists. “any chance you can loosen these? I do come in peace you know.”

The woman gives her an amused look. “sure you do.”

* * *

Inside, the temple is cramped and smells like deep growing plants. The tunnels beneath it make up a seemingly endless array of identical catacombs. She can feel the forgotten shadows of dead things living in the walls. Jyn clenches her fists as they come to a large atrium. She eyes the people scurrying around. There’s a group huddled around a com spec table, all of whom look up as she enters. A woman dressed in a white robe comes around the table towards them. Behind her, a tall dark haired man stands with his face in the shadows.

_Here we go,_ Jyn thinks and takes a breath.

* * *

“You shouldn’t stay in this place,” she urges Mon Mothma later. The woman has taken off her robe and is decanting a glass of honey colored liquid into a glass. Captain Andor acts as her shadow, standing like a thin spectre in the corner. She can feel his eyes on her, although every time she glances at him he seems entranced with staring at the wall.

“Why not?” Mon indicates the second glass with her chin. Jyn shakes her head. “This place is perfectly hidden in the jungle. It’s impossible to scan from the sky.”

“There’s something…strange here,” Jyn’s embarrassed as soon as it leaves her mouth.

Mon Mothma laughs and walks back to sit at her desk. She takes a sip of her glass. “You sound like a Jedi,” she lowers the glass. “But of course all the Jedi are dead.”

“Of course.” Jyn echoes, unsure of how to proceed. Her heart races under Mon Mothma’s placid stare.

“There’s rumor a great Sith Lord died here,” Captain Andor says abruptly from the corner, cutting through the tension like a knife. Mon Mothma sends him a bemused look like she’s surprised he’s spoken at all. “That energy may be what you feel.” He glances at his superior and shrugs, unapologetic.

“Indeed,” Mon Mothma allows, before threading her fingers together atop her desk. “The ghosts of the Massassi slaves wander the halls here at night. Or so they say.”

Jyn puts her hands on her hips. “I have enough ghosts as it is.” She says. “I delivered the message, but somehow it seems I’m now your prisoner.”

“Prisoner isn’t quite the word I’d use.” Mon Mothma sighs. “However, you do know the location of our secret base and Ms. Erso, that is not something we can let walk off this planet.”

There’s a sinking feeling in her gut. “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“No,” Mon Mothma nods, “Not willingly, I agree. I have a proposal for you. Help us find these plans your father spoke of and we’ll let you go in peace.”

“I’m not here to fight in your war,” Jyn snaps, face flushing.

“You made the decision to be involved the moment you handed over the message,” Captain Andor speaks again. He comes around the side of Mon Mothma’s desk and leans back against it, crossing his arms. “You are a part of this now, Jyn. Ms. Erso.” He shakes his head.

_Strange man,_ Jyn thinks. She finds herself unable to formulate a reply.

“Captain Andor can show you to your room,” Mon Mothma says in what is clearly meant to be a dismissal. “Welcome to the Rebellion, Jyn Erso.”

* * *

Captain Andor leads her through a maze of indistinguishable stone halls for a number of long minutes. They walk in silence, passing groups of Rebels every once in a while. At one point Andor stops to answer someone’s question and Jyn is forced to hover awkwardly at his side, keenly aware of the curious glances sent her way.

Finally, he stops in front of an innocuous door and punches in a key code. “The door should be coded to your biometrics now.” He turns to nod at her. She reaches past him to palm the door open and he steps aside to let her enter. The room is small, just big enough for a bunk against the wall and a little nook fresher. Still, it’s the cleanest, most private space she’s had in years.

“Thank you,” she finds herself saying, and glances back to catch his eye.

“Of course.” Andor almost smiles at her. The lines around his eyes soften. “Thank you for bringing the message.”

They watch each other for another moment in silence. And it’s so strange that Jyn finds herself asking slowly, “Do I know you?”

His eyes, she notes, are like deep pools of dark still water. The same color silt as Lah’mu sands.

“No,” he says, after a moment. His voice soft and strangely familiar. Dreamlike. Something in the shape of his mouth seems sad. “I don’t think you do.”

* * *

**two.**

“The success of this mission is paramount,” Lyra says. The late afternoon light casts strange sharp shadows across her face as it shines through the temple windows. Jyn watches the dust motes float through the air. “You cannot fail.”

“I won't,” She lifts her chin. The high collar of her robe itches the soft skin of her neck. “I know what’s at stake.”

Her mother’s eyes are sad when they meet hers. “Oh Jyn,” she sighs. “You have no idea.”

* * *

It takes weeks to infiltrate the base, but she does it. When she pulls her blaster on Krennic in the lift, the look on his face is worth the long hours of solitude in space; the sharp moments of doubt like stones lining the pockets of her robe. It’s all going according to plan until for some reason the lifts doors open again and a low ranking Imperial officer steps in. When he looks up, the three of them freeze in a way that Jyn would have found comical in a less serious moment.

He’s a tall man, and something strange is happening to his face when he glances between her and Krennic. She can’t explain the shift; something in his eyes maybe. A slackening and abrupt tightness of the mouth. He’s standing very still and she’s tempted to shoot him so he’ll look away from her. Cease being a problem. As it is, she senses no darkness from him, just a strange grey sadness.

“Don’t move,” she says to the both of them. The lift doors close. “You’re coming with me.”

* * *

A platoon of storm troopers ambush them, no doubt called by Krennic before she’d destroyed his com. She takes a few out with her baton before leading her prisoners into a storage room and locking the door.

“You’ll never escape,” Krennic sneers at her from his place against the wall.

She sighs and removes her cloak, letting it pool around her feet before pulling the silver cylinder from her belt.

“Watch me,” she says to his enraged face. The other Imperial is noticeably silent.

She ignites the saber, watching in satisfaction as the violet blade sizzles. The soldiers in the hall don’t stand a chance.

* * *

Jyn pulls her blade free and turns away as the body falls. The hallway beyond is clear and she can just make out the sweet curve of _Kyber_ in the bay. In the distance there is the tell-tale screaming of TIE fighters. _Not over yet,_ she thinks.

Krennic is pale as death when she turns back to corral him. His Imp subordinate is impossibly stoic at his side.

“What are you?” Krennic has spittle drying on the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, Director.” She motions him towards the door, then nods to the other man. “You too Dark Eyes. Let’s go.”

* * *

She brings them before the Council and throws Krennic on the ground at their feet. The Imperial officer gives her a look out of the corner of his eye before kneeling next to him.

“Impossible,” Krennic is spouting his usual drivel of idiocy from where he’s splayed on the floor. His eyes are wide and scared. “The Jedi were all wiped out.”

“Evidently you missed a few of us,” Jyn can see by the tilt of her mother’s head that she’s darkly amused. “Well done, Jedi Erso. You are relieved.”

Jyn hesitates, fighting the urge to glance at the quiet Imperial. He's watching her.

“Was there something else?” Her mother asks.

“No,” she says after a moment. Bows, and takes her leave.

* * *

It’s with great surprise that she runs into the Imperial in the gardens later. He’s no longer dressed in uniform, instead garbed in a soft dark blue wool coat and brown pants. He doesn’t seem surprised to see her; merely rises from the bench as she approaches.

“You’re not an Imperial,” she says with sudden realization.

“No.” he agrees with a lilting accent. It’s the first thing he’s said to her. “Then again, I never said I was.”

She laughs and suddenly they’re smiling at each other.

“You knew me,” she’s somehow certain of this. The brightness of his soul can mean nothing else. Maybe it should scare her. It doesn’t.

His eyes are soft in the winter light. “I always do.”

* * *

**three.**

“I’m telling you the crate was here.” It’s a droid’s voice for sure. Jyn’s crouching about ten feet away, keenly aware of the pillaged crate at her side. Of the data chip in her boot. Of her heart pounding in her throat. _Just how far can droid sensors reach anyway?_ She wonders, wildly.

“Well, it’s not here now,” the man’s voice is softly accented. He sounds frustrated as he sighs. She can hear him kick something. “I guess we-“

“Wait,” the droid says, “there’s someone coming.”

There’s a scuffling sound: a quick rearrangement of cargo bins. Jyn holds her breath hoping they don’t decide her nook is the perfect place to hide. Her hand goes to her blaster at her side and she grips it with cold fingers.

The stormtroopers pass through the cargo hold chatting about the latest speeder on the market. Once they leave, Jyn lets out a slow breath and leans back against the container.

* * *

He’s got a lean hungry look to his face as he stares at her. _Too many missed meals maybe_ , she thinks. Shame they had to pick the same ship as her.

“Should I shoot her?” The Imperial droid at his side asks, jerking up a blaster. Jyn freezes, hand on her own gun.

“No,” the thin man puts his hand out to push down the blaster. His eyes don’t leave Jyn’s and his mouth curls. Jyn realizes with a jolt that he’s smiling at her. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” 

Jyn doesn’t lower her blaster. “No?” She raises her eye brows, readjusts her grip.

The man cocks his head. “No.” He nods. “Do you need a lift?” He doesn’t wait for her response, instead making his way up to the front of the ship. She can hear him tapping something into the navi computer.

The droid’s eyes are an eerie yellow. “I don’t like you,” he says, before turns and making his way after the man, leaving Jyn alone in the cramped cargo hold. After a moment of hesitation, she goes to sit on the small bench and waits for the tell-tale stomach swoop that comes with a hyperspace jump.

* * *

Later Cassian Andor – he had introduced himself after the ship had jumped away – comes to unpack his bag in the back galley with her. She watches him empty his pack in silence. When he finishes he goes to sit and lean against the wall like all his strings have been cut.

“Why didn’t you shoot me?” Jyn asks after a while. They’re across from each other in the narrow galley; the ship’s lights flicker above them.

Andor’s chin jerks up and he gives her a searching look. “Did you want to be shot?”

“No,” she eyes him. “Answer the question.”

He leans his head back against the wall, watching her. Jyn clenches her fists and meets his stare. Beneath them the bucket of bolts shudders.

“I think you might be Alliance, no?” he says eventually, fingers tapping on his knee in an obvious pattern.

She crosses her arms. “Where are we going?” she thinks, _probably Yavin IV._

Andor glances towards the cockpit. “We’re stopping by the refueling station and then moving on. The ship’s fuel cells weren’t made for deep space travel.”

“Hmmm.” Yavin then. “Fine.”

He’s sitting very straight; a painful and strangely familiar set to his shoulders. “You’ll stay?”

“Looks like we’re going to the same place,” Jyn says. “I’ll stay.”

* * *

Years later she admits: “I wish I could remember,” as she presses their palms together. _Odysseus_ hums around them. She feels safe here; cocooned under a down blanket in the rickety bunk.

“I know,” Cassian’s voice is soft, on the cusp of sleep. His fingers rub against hers, warm. “I’m sorry.”

* * *

**four**.

As Cassian tells it, they’ve met many times.

“I’m fighting my own ghost,” she looks out over the winter sea, embittered. The ocean doesn’t freeze here; the waves churn a slate salt grey, smoky and fathomless. “I’m not her, Cassian.”

She listens to him come to stand beside her, curl his fingers over the railing and look out at the fog.

“I know,” he says eventually, voice quiet. He turns to face her and his eyes are so earnest her breath catches in her throat. “you’re you, Jyn.” he says, mouth tight like it hurts. “You’re real. I know. Please don’t mistake me for thinking anything else.”

* * *

**five.**

She glances up at the leviathan in the sky and remembers standing in its command bay when it decimated Jedah. The molten wave in silent suspension, bending into space in a plasma arc. How beautiful it had looked; how terrible. Later, bracing herself in her fresher as she’d vomited into the toilet, her head pounding at the loss of life, the sound of their cries in her mind – the crescendo followed by abrupt silence.

Jade finding her in front of the viewport and saying _it gets easier_ , her small hand on her shoulder. Her presence a balm through the force. Jyn asking, _how exactly?_

Now she thinks, _Planet killer_. she thinks, _Fa_ _ther’s legacy._ Then she tries not to think at all. The glass lift races towards the radio platform and her destiny.

* * *

He turns from the consul right as she blasts him in the shoulder.

“Jyn,” he gasps out, winded. He presses his hand to his side. His eyes are big and dark as they stare up at her. Oh, she hates this man, the one who thinks he knows her. Cassian Andor, who refused to kill her on Tatooine. Who had held his hand out to her on the skiff and asked her to come with him.

_His mistake,_ she thinks, lifting her blaster again.

“Wait!” he cries out, but not to her, and she feels- turns and ignites her sword just in time to catch the blade of Luke Skywalker’s green saber.

“Skywalker,” she hisses, shoving him away. They circle each other for a moment on the edge of the world. He looks tired; has scars on his face, the hand Vader cut off is gloved in black. Good, maybe this time she can kill him.

“Jyn,” he pants, parrying her swings. “You came.” 

She lunges towards him, striking with her white blade. “Don’t call me that,” she bites out as their lightsabers crackle together. She lashes out with her foot and he falls, rolls away. They stand facing each other from opposite sides of the platform – Andor between them like some strange moderator.

Suddenly, the platform shudders. The metal seems to shiver and the antenna overhead vaporizes in a haze of microparticles; aluminum, xanthium, titaniae, quartz. Jyn chances a glance up at the sky, catches the tail end of the flash of laser light retreating. Has a second to think, _why didn’t you wait_ , before she’s knocked down by the first shock wave.

“We have to leave now,” Skywalker is yelling, his face chalky white. Jyn can barely make him out through all the grit flying in the air. Andor, she can’t see at all.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she spits. Beyond Skywalker, the horizon has melted, lit up into a wave of fire. _Thirty minutes,_ she suddenly remembers Jade telling her in the flight bay.

Suddenly a hand is grabbing her arm, and Andor is at her side. “We don’t have time for this Jyn,” he says quietly by her ear, pulling her towards the turbolifts.

* * *

Then it’s the three of them; Skywalker in a corner with blood in his fair hair, Andor and his dark eyes and pinched mouth, Jyn with her heart in her throat. Above, she can see the Death Star floating innocuously in the sky.

“There was an old hauler at the corner of the field when we came in,” Skywalker’s voice is quiet. The lift rattles, ominously around them.

“Let’s hope it’s still there,” Andor says tightly.

Jyn says nothing; continues to gaze upwards.

* * *

“Come with us,” Skywalker shouts over the wind. The three of them are standing bracingly on the boarding ramp, cloaks whipping around them.

Andor is leaning his body against a metal actuator, hand pressed to the hole in his shoulder. His eyes are dark. “Please,” he begs. Something in his face makes it hard to look at him; impossible to look away.

Her heart is in her throat she whispers, “alright,” and watches the strained lines around his mouth relax. _Alright._

* * *

**six.**

“How much of this is real, do you think?” She asks, pressing her hand to the glass. Outside, the scenery is a blur of greens and blues as the steel train races its way through the wilderness. The rain makes everything soft, like a Monet painting. She can almost believe, almost see-

“How much of anything is real?” Cassian’s voice is soft behind her. She knows without looking he has glanced up from his book and is watching her with his quiet, dark eyes. After a moment, she moves away from the window and comes to sit beside him.

“Tell me again,” she says, leaning her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes when she feels him rest his head against hers. “Tell me about the times we’ve met.”

“Which time?” she can feel him smiling against her hair.

“Your favorite time.” she commands, like always. Wondering which one he’ll go with now.

“They’re all my favorite, darling.” he answers, like always. He traces a finger against her palm, across her lifeline's jagged path.

* * *

**seven.**

It’s snowing the day she meets him for the first time. Snowing so heavily the world is cast a soft grey through the thick glass windows. Jyn’s chewing on the tip of her pencil, idly perusing one of the files Liam had dropped off on her desk in his morning rush, when there’s a hubbub of commotion from the front offices. Aoife races past her desk, clip clipping in her heels, and then races back again with a cup of tea.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Jyn asks Mara when she plops down at the desk next to her, a stack of unsorted mail in her hands.

“New guy,” she says, not bothering to look up from an envelope. Today her fiery hair is wrapped around her head in an ornate braid. Jyn wonders what time she has to wake up to get it looking like that. Her own blond hair is up in a messy bun on the top of her head. “Apparently he’s a looker.”

“And foreign,” Aoife comes back from the front. Her cheeks are flushed. “I think he’s Spanish or something.”

“He can’t be Spanish, Aoife.” Jyn frowns.

“Oh, who cares Jyn,” Aoife rolls her eyes, “he’s gorgeous!”

Jyn lets the file fall closed, unaccountably grumpy. She pulls her own cup of scalding hot tea towards her and blows on the surface of it. Pushes some loose strands of hair out of her face. “Well excuse me for being curious,” she grumbles, catching Mara give her a smile out of the corner of her eye.

“He’s Mexican,” Mara drolls, after Aoife goes back up to the front. She throws two manila envelopes on Jyn’s desk adding, “OSS.”

Jyn meets her eyes. “Oh? Guess we’ll be working together then.”

“Guess so,” Mara yawns. “Don’t you have that meeting at Whitehall in 15?”

Jyn glances at her watch. “Bloody hell,” she hisses and stands, slipping her feet into her heels. She grabs her coat and looks outside at the snow, heaving a sigh. 

* * *

As she steps out of headquarters she nearly collides with a tall man coming in. The snow flurries around them as he holds the door for her to step down the stoop.

“Pardon me,” she circumvents him, glancing up. He has a hat pulled down low over dark hair; under the brim, his eyes are a bright tawny brown. 

He nods without speaking, but she can feel his eyes on her back as she walks through the snow.

* * *

She calls him the Quiet Man, because he never really speaks to her. He’s in and out of London like a shadow. She sees him a handful of times as the winter months deepen but they don’t officially meet until right before boarding the plane.

“Cassian Andor,” he tells her. She thinks the turn of his mouth looks sad and wonders what ghosts he’s searching for; what made him trade his home for this strange cold country.

“Jyn Erso,” she replies, although she’s sure he must know her name as she has known his. Little secrets between spies.

He nods faintly, as if to someone in another room. She waits but he doesn’t say anything else, so she drifts away to the other side of the plane.

“Are you partnered with anyone on this?” he asks as she’s about to disembark.

“No,” she replies over her shoulder, surprised he’s bothered to talk to her after his long stretch of silence. The wind sweeps her hair back over her face, hiding him for a moment from her gaze. “I work alone.”

* * *

Three months later the city falls and it all goes to hell overnight. She watches the offices burn from a fire started by her own hand and wonders, not for the first time, just what it all means. Then she’s running through cramped back alleys with her pistol clenched in her fist and her heart in her throat. Around the next corner, she finds them.

Jyn fires three times rapidly and hits two soldiers in the face. The third shot goes wide and she ducks behind a building, The dust is so heavy she almost misses the man coming the other way. They collide and she lashes out with her fist, slamming it against his temple. He grabs her wrist, and she kicks out, hitting him in the side of the knee. Something then makes her pause; maybe it’s the sound of his voice as his breath leaves him, or the feeling of his hand on her wrist, but she lowers her arm and waits for him to look up at her.

“Jyn,” he pants out, face pale. Cassian Andor. He lets go of her wrist like it’s fire. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” She falls against the wall next to him when an explosion rattles the ground. They shield their heads for few shaky moments, dust between them. “What are you doing here, Andor? I thought you’d left country a month ago.”

He looks up at her, mouth pinched. “Come with me,” he says after a moment, instead of answering her question. The world shakes around them. “I know a place.”

* * *

“Before the war, my father was a renowned scientist in Berlin.” She tells him. They’re sitting around a small kindling fire. Two weeks on the road and she feels like maybe the facade of Captain Andor is beginning to crack and she’ll finally meet the man beneath.

Andor doesn’t say anything, just watches her from his place beside the fire. She shrugs, looking into the flames. Continues after a moment of contemplation: “Of course he’s a Jew so…”

“When was the last time you heard from him?” He asks into the silence.

She clears her throat but her voice still comes out croaky with emotion. “Six months ago. He was planning on making his way to France but he never made it.” She rubs her face. “I know I’m probably chasing a ghost.”

She watches him look into the fire, watches the flames reflect off his dark eyes. She waits for him to say what she’s thinking, but he doesn’t. When he finally looks up at her all he says is, “Well, what are we waiting for?”

* * *

Later she thinks: _it was me._ Later she thinks: _Why can’t I ever be the one –_

* * *

The soldier yanks off her necklace and holds it up. The gold star glimmers in the darkling wood.

“Jüden,” he spits on her like she’s an animal. Her fingers curl in on themselves in fear. In rage.

The next few seconds happen before she can blink; the man, gripping her hair tight, teeth bared; Cassian shouting, coming up behind him with a knife clenched in his fist; the two of them grappling together like beasts; Jyn and Cassian panting over the fallen body in the snow. In the distance she can hear the crackling of rapid machine gun fire echoing through the skeleton trees. Then Cassian is pulling her into his arms and she’s muffling herself against the rough fabric on his shoulder, shaky with adrenaline and fear.

“It’s alright, you’re alright,” he’s saying soft into her ear. His palm against the back of her head is warm.

“We can’t stay here,” she says, eventually, though the sounds of fighting have grown so faint she can barely make it out. “We have to keep moving.” She pulls back. It’s almost completely dark now; the trees closing in around them. She feels like they’re deep underwater. Two creatures living at the bottom the sea.

Cassian bends down and picks up her necklace, rubs it between his fingers for a moment. “The clasp is broken,” he says quietly, mournful. “I can’t fix it here.” He makes to give it back to her.

She takes his hand and folds his fingers around it. “Hold on to it for me?” Their hands are curled between their bodies. When she glances up at him he looks like he’s been struck.

“Of course,” he whispers. “I’ll keep it until we get back.”

* * *

Now, the two of them are pushed together with a hundred others, watching the grey clouds go by through the bars of the train.

“Why didn’t you leave?” She puts her hand on his shoulder, on his chest. He’s listing against her, sighing with exhaustion.

When he meets her eyes he looks peeled open, that soft thing exposed inside the hard shell of a man. _Hello,_ she thinks. He’s shaking his head, wordless. That’s alright though, because she knows. Maybe she always has.

In her next breath she’s leaning up to kiss him; his dirt covered palms come up to cradle her face.

* * *

“Where are we?” Her mouth feels full of cotton. The shrieking whistle of the train must have woken her. She looks at Cassian’s profile, starkly beautiful in the dim light. She watches his breath cloud around his mouth as he stares out the small barred window.

He shakes his head, silent.

“Where, Cassian?” She clears her throat and sits up. He gives her a sharp glance. “Tell me.”

“Hinzert,” he says after a moment, mouth pinched tight. “We just passed a sign for it.”

“Hinzert,” she repeats, mouth gone numb with the cold. Her lagging mind struggling to remember years old paper files. “Labor camp?”

“Or worse,” he’s still looking out the window but his hand comes out to pull her close to his side. She’s not tall enough to look out so she contents herself with closing her eyes again. Her bones are so chilled they ache. “Try not to fall asleep Jyn, it’s too cold.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she grumps against him. She can feel the vibration of his laughter echo against her sternum.

“I never can,” he presses his lips to her head.

* * *

“Don’t worry Jyn,” his mouth shapes her name like _love_. He’s got blood on his lips; his face pale with death’s pallor. She can see the shadow of his life fading in his cinnamon eyes. “I’ll find you.”

“I know,” she whispers, clutching at his hand. “I know.”

* * *

The end (the beginning)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the speech Flint gives in Black Sails. If you haven’t seen this show…check it out…it is one of the best I have ever seen and highly underrated. Tell me which iteration you like best; I may add to it!   
>  "Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, was visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he slays all his enemies and sets his house in order, he must do one last thing before he can rest. The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland. And keep walking until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel. For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that’s where he’d find peace. In the end, that’s all I want. To walk away from the sea and find some peace."


End file.
